Allegra Kirkland

Allegra Kirkland is a freelance journalist and web assistant at The Nation. Born and raised on the Upper West Side, Kirkland recently moved back to her hometown of Manhattan. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Reader, The Nation, Latinos Post and DS. In her free time, she likes to wander around the city and plan her eventual escape to California.

From this Author

The journalistic expression “If it bleeds; it leads” is particularly resonant in Mexico, where an entire subgenre of daily tabloids, devoted to crime and disaster, cover train wrecks and murders in lurid detail. Enrique Metinides made a career as a crime photographer for these nota roja (“bloody news”), earning the sobriquet the “Mexican Weegee” for his obsessive chronicling of accidents and crime scenes throughout Mexico[…..]

In an unassuming brick building on a gray Willamsburg street, adjacent to a used car lot and several doors down from a polythene bag manufacturer, there is a portal to the West Coast. Kevin Cooley’s Skyward, currently on view at the Boiler—the project space of the Pierogi Gallery—captures the quintessence of Los Angeles life: the car as constant, the looping freeways, the towering palm trees[…..]